


oceanic elegy

by orphan_account



Series: fighting climate change with Eridan Ampora. [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Commentary on the current state of our oceans, Environmentalism, Established Relationship, Friendship, Game Designer Sollux, M/M, POV Alternating, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Simulation, if you don’t want it don’t read it, yeah I’m writing about climate change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 01:02:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18884956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Sollux processes a memory.Eridan mourns the ocean.





	oceanic elegy

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> I would like to dedicate this story to the writer of the fic Dreaming in Binary, blackSparrow.
> 
> The passages in italics denote Eridan’s flashbacks.
> 
> I am not a game designer so any inaccuracies in regards to the length of time it takes to do things are mine.

_Before the bottles poisoned your ocean, you found peace in its depths._

 

_You forgot your sorrows, accumulated through so many sweeps, and sank on your back into the forgiving embrace of a darkness beyond dreaming._

 

_Now your head bonks against plastic, your hands strangle scrunched wads of plastic spheres, your gills seize on the noxious fumes of decaying waste._

 

_Dying in increments, you choke on soundless sobs as they disappear into vaporous bubbles, a masochistic magic trick._

 

_Resurfacing, throat shredded raw, you rasp his name: “...Sol?”_

 

_He pulls you out, and you escape yourself._

 

“I’m working on a thimulathion,” he says, not daring to divert his focus from the husktop.

 

“Wwhat kinda simulation?”

 

“A nethethary one.”

 

Vague, vague, vague. He’s been spending an inordinate amount of time working on this “simulation,” though, in lieu of churning out sadistic coding for Karkat or implanting visionary viruses.

 

“Wwhatever you’ve got cookin’ there, I know I’m more entertainin’.”

 

He smirks, programming away. An inexhaustible admiration for his dexterity overwhelms your senses.

 

“You’re a bit more thtimulating than one of thothe angler fith with their lantern off. I’ll give you that.”

 

“God, Sol.”

 

He snorts out a laugh, but all mirth grinds to silence in his throat when you turn him around by his spongey oracular protrusions and investigate his fangs, your lashing muscle laboring over his incisors as though you supplied them yourself.

 

“Ampora,” he says, voice vibrating down your throat, “fuck off _.”_

 

You’ll scold him later anyway when he’s free of distractions.

 

-

 

You underestimated the time this project would steal from you.

 

Research on littering you figured would take about the same length of time Eridan needed to write one of his godawful wwizard fiction stories. But no, that took longer. Much longer. Turns out you knew close to nothing about how bad it’s gotten. It’s so bad that the average seadweller can’t wander five feet into the ocean without some form of plastic debris assaulting their aquatic entities.

 

Standing beside him on the sand, watching the ocean relentlessly shovel its contents over your bare feet, you’ve caught Eridan scaling crests of waves through glassy eyes, weeping.

 

Now you remember the garbage, always visible from an astonishing distance, aided towards you by polluted waters.

 

This memory alone devours your sleep, reduces your recuperacoon to a frivolous indulgence. Your husktop beckons, and you program your simulation as if your hands rage, aflame, candelabras smouldering at your fingertips.

 

In your programmed world, the ocean needs your help. A young seadweller takes up the task and begins systematically cleansing the ocean of its poisons, swimming out past the thresholds his energy allows. Eventually, he stops, for all poignant simulations need a dose of reality.

 

The guilty parties keep littering because there’s nowhere else to dump all their garbage. You’ve modeled this setting off of a recurring nightmare: waking up surrounded by gutted appliances, sizzling wires, decomposing remains of friends, the ground beneath melted by acid.

 

In that this leads to the problem’s cause, you hope that in time Eridan can understand what needs to change before the ocean heals.

 

Knowing him, though (and you do, better than most), this knowledge won’t last.

 

Later, while Eridan’s out (probably swimming again), Karkat advises you to program yourself into the simulator.

 

Groaning, you say, “It’th not about me, KK.”

 

Your diminutive friend rolls his glowing red eyes.

 

“Well, _now_ you’re making it about you. Self-centred prick. Ampora might register your meaning with more clarity if you’re able to explain it in the story.”

 

Slumping against your husktop, you stare down at your hands.

 

“I might ath well ethplain it in perthon at thith  point.”

 

“God _damn_ , you’re dense, Sollux. Look at me.”

 

He steers you towards him by your shoulders, and for an instant, you envision the entirety of your brief life as you’ve lived it thus far, and wonder how you might have endured it without him.

 

“Sollux, this gesture by itself is meaningful enough. Can you imagine for one fucking minute how much it would mean to Ampora if you appeared?”

 

Most of the profundity in Karkat’s statements requires significant silence to steep in their impact. He usually fills up the silence himself with his own voice. This time, head down, he waits with you.

 

After a long pause, you say, “When you put it like that, I think tho.”

 

He gives you a tight smile.

 

“It’s probably going to take the rest of my fucking life to figure out why, but helping you out is always worth it.”

 

Turning back to your husktop, you say, “That’th friendthip, dumbath.”

 

“Some friend you are, smartass.”

 

With Karkat huddled beside you, the picture of begrudging loyalty, you solidify the details of your character and weave them into the story alongside Eridan’s stand-in. Apart from a lack of distinctive orbwear and no apparent lisp in the textual dialogue, it’s clearly you. You foresee Eridan immediately identifying you.

 

From the corner of your eye, you catch Karkat scowling. “Why the lack of shooshing?”

 

“For fuckthake, KK. Thoothing’th not the point here.”

 

“ _I_ know that.” Now he turns his scowl to you. “Ampora doesn’t. He’s liable to get suspicious if these two obvious self-inserts don’t give off some hint you’re morails beyond cowardly ambiguity.”

 

“ _Ugh._ Why’re you right?”

 

You program Eridan’s character to plunge into the ocean and writhe towards a sinking stream of plastic, cape and all, before you launch yourself after him, the both of you rolling into a spiraling wave.

 

Karkat’s brow twitches. “That works.”

 

-

 

“Eridan,” he says straight away as you stagger in from another mournful swim, his eyes for once torn away from the husktop, “it’th done.”

 

Fitting banter escapes you. Deep down in the depressions forming tributaries in your mind, you’ve become aware this simulation is more than a game.

 

Draping your dampened cape over his shoulders, you lift his chin with one hand, the better to gaze upon him.

 

As you move down, preparing to swoop him up, Sollux says, “Afterwardth.”

 

Frowning, you slide one finger down his jawbone, up through his whispering hairline. “Better make this wworth my wwhile.”

 

Booting up the husktop, Sollux smirks. An insatiable urge to dig your hands into his stomach until he laughs uncontrollably clouds your senses, but before your arms can capture their target, you startle yourself by speaking from the simulated universe.

 

“Guess I need to save my glubbin’ ocean myself!”

 

_And then you’re reliving it, waves drowning in your cape’s voluminous folds, the weight of opulence a damning shroud, your hands numbing and burning with a chill like a spiteful god’s smile, something out of your wizard fiction. You scream, your sorrow at once given use. You wish for the tentacles of a cephalopod so that you might store the plastic debris in your suctioned grip; you wish for a voice of multitudes so that you might speak with not one but one thousand voices, all at once, chiming and bidding all who traversed the ocean’s terrain to a thoughtless, wondrous madness._

 

_Warmth surrounds you with a sudden violence, ensnaring you with a grip that robs your lungs of their burning ache and with it water, copious amounts of water, so much water you forget you’re through vomiting it up when you heave and nothing comes out._

 

_Sollux held you for so long, you swore you watched his hair grow._

 

And he holds you now, his back to the husktop, crying.


End file.
